Not the comforting, post-ecstasy warmth with my men wrapped around me like a living blanket, but something deeper, sharper—like a strand of molten gold being pulled straight through my sternum. A hiss escaped from my lips before I could hold it back, my hand shooting to the spot between my breasts.
The mark.
It was burning under my skin.
No—it felt like it wasawakening.
Jet jerked up beside me, hair a dark snarl, eyes already flaring with heat. “Reverie?” His voice was rough, deep, and so ready to wreck anything that would harm me. But the moment his gaze dropped to my chest, his breath stuttered.
The others begin to stir.
Zane growled in satisfaction, “I knew it!” even as he scrambled closer.
Zeke blinked sleep out of his eyes, freezing when he saw the light pulsing beneath my fingers. Nathan was already kneeling behind me, palms warm on my shoulders. Oren was the last to move but the first tounderstand—his whole body went still,shadows around him thinning as if they too were holding their breath.
The glow built.
White-hot.
Beautiful.
“Reverie,” Zane whispered reverently, his voice dropping into that deep rumble Drakk used when the Draxon was too close to the surface.
I pulled my hand away.
And the world shifted.
My mark—my triquetra with the tree of life spiraling through its heart—was no longer the soft shimmer it had always been.
It wasalive.
The lines glowed like heated metal, curling and shifting under my skin as if drawing breath. Tiny roots stretched outward, reaching toward the individual symbols of my Faction as though eager to claim them anew.
Nathan’s dagger flashed first—emerald and sharp, the green so intense it looked carved from a star.
Zeke’s moon pulsed a bruised, royal violet, casting gentle arcs of icy light across my skin.
Zane’s sun flared next, burning gold so bright I swore I could feel Drakk’s heat radiating beneath it.
Oren’s bolt wasn’t just red—it was raw, pale-crimson lightning, writhing as if it wanted to leap into his hands.
Each symbol was pulled toward the center, toward me, toward the Nexus of the triquetra.
“Reverie…” Jet’s voice had dropped to a hush. “Something’s different.”
He wasn’t wrong. Because right there—above the interwoven knot, just touching the top of the tree of life—another shape began forming, as though carved by invisible hands.
A crown.
Simple lines at first.
Not regal, but raw.
Older than Aurathia’s history, older than the memories whispering in my bones.
But as it sharpened into clarity, the room fell silent.
A crack split the crown clean down the right side.
